audition pieces

[elevateme]

my friend has just done 6 auditions, all in UK for royal academy, royal college, guildhall bla bla etc.

royal academy was the only one he didnt get into - so in september hes off to royal college.

for his auditions, he played beethoven appassionata, chopin scherzo no 3, & liszt gnomenreigen. so i was wondering

what do you think are the best pieces to play in an audition?
apparently its a good idea to play something to show off technique

[debussy symbolism]

Greetings.

I think that technical competence is only one part of the audition. One can play a technically difficult piece mechanically, but it can be played beautifully. So I think that the judges also look for musical interpretations as well as technical mastery naturally. Hope this helps.

[elevateme]

thanks very much that did help

i think

bach 24th p & f bmin
beethoven appassionata
chopin ballade 4
liszt feux follets
ravel gaspard

will be mine..   ..not sure how long you get

[kriskicksass]

Be careful with repertoire like that. If you can play it all well, go for it, but if it's isn't perfectly polished you'll just be asking for trouble. And you don't get to play everything; they just ask you for the most challenging parts of the pieces and judge you based on that. In that list, they'll probably ask for the fugue, the development and maybe the third movement of the beethoven, and the coda of the ballade. You'd do well to make sure that at least those sections are absolutely perfect.

[kelly_kelly]

For my school orchestra audition I used a piece that's significantly easier than it sounds... I almost laughed when she claimed that my technique was spectacular. That would only work at a lower level audition though 

[franzliszt2]

Well I played the exact same proggramme as elevateme's friend, and didn;t get into academy.... and did 6 auditions. hehe  .

I think that your pieces look great, but I wouldn't recomend ballade 4, people have very strong opinions on how it should be played, and take sudden dislike to particular interpratations, and feel it HAS to be played like they do. Although technically I know you could play it great  .

Appassionata is great, when I did that they liked it, they only wanted to hear the opening, up to the recapitulation in the 1st mvt, which was slighly annoying since I spent ages learning the rest and never got to play it.

Bach preludes and fugues go down very well, it shows off lots of musical abilty, and varied style. I didn;t do Bach, as I don;t feel confident enough to perform it, as I'm sure you know judging by my Bach prelude and fugue I did for my diploma.

Do an etude!!!!, you have to, they need to see that you can play difficult pieces so that you can cope with the pieces they will give you. Musical abilty is perhaps more important, but it must go hand in hand with technical abilty or you won;t be able to express you musical abilities in your technique can't cope with it. But you can play lots of etudes well so I'm sure that won;t be a problem. I did gnomenrigen because I didn;t want to do a chopin etude because I felt lots of people would do them, ie op10no.4 winterwind etc gnomenriegen is a fun piece, and considering the chopin scherzo and appasionata are heary works, gnomenroeigen lightened the mood.

Feax follets........ Great piece,but make sure its perfect, its a nasty piece full of difficult doiuble notes, leaps, and anything one can imagine. But I'm sure it would impress.

You only have to play three pieces for royal scottish, royal college, guildhall
3-4 for royal northern
2 for trinty
And 20-40 mins for academy.

I heard some people playing some crazy stuff at my royal college audition, like Liszt Sonatas, and mental things that could only be described as virtousic to the degree of stupiditiy, like Alkan and stuff, and they were playing them CRAP,I mean they were awful, wring notes, slow tempos, bad pedalling, and just generally not good.

Ask David for advice in your next lesson, he'll guide you along the right path, he certainly did for me

Hope that helps

[elevateme]

thanks adam, that really really helps, also thankyou for the lovely comments!!

i think il miss out ballade 4 then...  ..but maybe youre just saying that because uve gotten sick of it? 

[pianowelsh]

For all these schools its musicality and professional performance potential that they ae looking for with exception of RAM where they are not loking for porfessional performance potential. There they are looking for professional performance experience - like international competitions/concerto experience/festivals and masterclass series youve aquitted yourself at so unless you have a string of accolades you'll find it tough at audition (unless you are exceptionally pretty and bat your eyelids lots!) All your pieces are a suitable level but you need to play them well because they are done so often for auditions and by their own students in the college so they tend to come at them with a lot of preconcieved ideas.  Anyone daring to play Gaspard at audition who can bring it off reasonably well will make an impression (i pressume you play all of it!?) Its true though that you will be asked only for selections from the various pieces which is a terribly barbaric way of doing things
but be prepared for it.  My teacher in lessons before hand would stand other side of the room and say pick up bar 10 line 3 pg 2 and get me to jump right to it for practice! Be prepared to talk about your repertoire choices and experience too as a lot of importance is placed on this nowadays.  There is usually somekind of sightreading test or quickstudy that they fling at you too so its good to be prepared for that. Trinity gave me an improvisation test - not sure whether they still do that or not??!  Sounds like you are a very capable musician and if you can play all the rep you listed to a good level im sure you'll have plenty to talk to them about.  good luck  - Dont forget to enjoy the experience!